Six Tips to Create an Effective Design For Your Blog

If you're designing or redesigning your blog, make sure you have all the elements that can make it appealing to your readers. If you're able to create a good impression through your design, chances are you'll have visitors reverting to your blog quite often.

Here are the 6 tips to create a design that is user-friendly and can appeal to your blog readers.

1. An attractive header

The first thing that a visitor may notice is the header or the upper portion of your blog. So, if you can design it creatively, it'll have an impact on your readers and they'll want to see more of your blog.

The header should look good along with the other elements used in your blog. It shouldn't be too tall as otherwise readers with small screen sizes will have to scroll down to read your post. You shouldn't make the header clumsy by adding too many elements like navigation, ads, etc. The header should have a background color such that it doesn't obscure the text you've used there. Read more about how to create attractive headers.

2. Clarity and readability

Clarity in design will help you differentiate between the various elements in your blog. You need to emphasize certain elements like post headlines and important points in your blog post. Use of bullets, numbering and subtitles in your content will make your posts scannable and increase readability.

You need to take care of the background color in your blog such that it blends with the text color. You should give enough space in between lines and paragraphs, and use appropriate font size (12-14px) for your text. These elements assure good readability in any browser used by your readers.

3. Strong navigation

A strong navigation design will help your readers access different sections of your blog with ease. It's good to have a navigation bar in the header, which will have links to major sections of your blog. Having a search feature in the header will help readers look for a certain topic and navigate within your blog. Creating a sidebar with links to your recent posts and most popular posts will help in greater page views, thus ensuring that you have better visitor experience in your blog.

4. Effective usage of visual elements

Certain blog posts may require visual elements like charts and graphs. So, make sure that you have such attractive visuals to help visitors get a grasp of your content easily. But avoid using too many images in your content. Make sure the images aren't distorted. You should also avoid images having a variety of sizes and alignments. In short, the visual elements should complement the text.

5. Have a great comment section

The comment section should have a great design, as it will tell your readers that you care for their feedback. Good design will help you promote the comment section provided your content is good enough to attract the readers' attention.

6. An attractive footer

Your blog should have a footer with helpful links leading to important and interesting sections of your blog. This will make readers browse through your blog once they finish reading a post. The footer can have links to the pages like Contact Us and About Us as well as pages where you talk about promotions/rewards for your readers and guest bloggers. There can be a blogroll with links to useful external blogs with similar interests as yours. All such things can help define a brand for your blog.

The key to a great design is to include all elements that can make your blog user-friendly. This is to ensure that visitors find it simple and easy to scan through our blog.